Michael & Liz are Bloggable

I haven't blogged about how we did during vegetarian month. As far as finishing it, we totally did it. As far as enjoying it, I'm not so sure. Around the 20th of the month we were ready to be done with it. But I will get into why.

The positives were that we really felt like we had control of what we were eating. It got to the point where we weren't even thinking about it. We started out the month really enthusiastic and cooking some new meals but that didn't continue. We made a lot of easy meals like pasta but we were laughing about the fact that we went the whole month without having just a salad for a meal. I also can say that it was causing me to lose weight because we were more conscious of what we were eating. I have a new respect for restaurant meals that I would normally never order. Our favorite meals were without a doubt the fritatta and the mexican pizzas.

I'll honestly say that there probably weren't as many negatives than there were positives, but there were a few. I am tired of cheese. Every single meal had cheese in it. I also was getting tired of beans but we didn't eat those as much. It was inconvenient because meals with meat are much easier to put together. Our restaurant behaviors didn't really change though because we don't eat a lot of meat outside the house anyway. The meals were not as cheap as I expected them to be... food is food, it was just as, if not more, expensive than our normal months of food.

Chances are, we will do it again next year. It was a good experiment and I think we could have done a better job of eating more fruit and vegetables than we actually did. I will also put that blame solely on me, because Liz does a great job. Me, not so much.

One thing that was awesome. I gave blood on August 27th and my blood pressure was the lowest it has ever been. It was 117/71. I attribute that to all the running and the vegetarian diet.

What did we do to celebrate the end? We went to Champps bar at Southpoint and had some wings at midnight (kind of midnight, we didn't make it till midnight, but it doesn't matter). We also took advantage of the free Chick-fil-a chicken strips on the 1st and for dinner we had some bison burgers at Ted's Montanta Grill. We have really been terrible about the happy meat this week but I'm dead set on only eating chicken if I cheat at all. It will be a long time before I eat beef that doesn't come from the farm. I had a spicy chicken at Wendy's this week and lots of wings on Thursday night for the Redskins vs. Giants game. I think we are back to our routine now. I might cheat occassionally but not as often anymore.